Thursday, December 22, 2016

The new frontiers of virtual reality

Virtual reality can change the way
individuals and groups interact, and for those interested in
experiencing and sharing its powerful benefits

Virtual reality opens the avenues to experience places and time periods otherwise inaccessible to an individual.

Virtual
reality (VR) has entered its golden age and now has the potential to
help people experience episodes and incidences, across time periods,
from a uniquely first-person perspective. While VR continues to make its
mark on entertainment, it has immense potential to allow people to
experience something ground-breaking. It equips people to experience
being in two realities at once, making ‘duality of presence’—being
present in two ‘worlds’ at once—a possibility. This extrapolation of VR
into reality has an extraordinary potential to create greater empathy,
understanding, compassion, and connection to the ‘real world’.

Virtual
reality has the capability to make one feel, and the power to make one
‘know’. By immersing in a ‘real’ experience, VR provides a perspective
from prime sources and acts as a representation of the real world. It
has the potential to positively impact sectors such as healthcare, media
and bring immersive experiences to life.

Immersive healing

High-resolution
imaging and detection technologies help enable precise, swift, and
timely diagnosis, can limit the number of invasive procedures, and
support preventive care. As an example, VR is currently being used to
help patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Utilizing Bravemind,
a clinical, interactive, virtual reality-based exposure therapy tool,
an immersive and realistic virtual environment as well as unique
interactive scenarios can be recreated. These enable a full-body
experience to help normalize the patients’ experiences, thus
fast-forwarding the therapy in some cases by as much as two to three
years.

Immersive discoveries

VR
opens the avenues to experience places and time periods otherwise
inaccessible to an individual. This feeds into man’s desire for
continuous discovery of the earth, ocean and even the stars. One such
example of this is the creation of Cry Out: The Lonely Whale Experience,
an underwater VR expedition. It takes the viewer into the depths of the
sea where they can witness the underwater life and how pollution has
disrupted and injured the delicate ecosystems that create our oceans.
This experience educates individuals about the implication of a mere
ordinary act on climate change.

Immersive action

VR
has also made an impact on journalism, bringing stories closer to life
for viewers. With video content fast becoming one of the most popular
modes of consumption, many media houses are significantly investing in
platforms which enable a video-first content approach. With a firm
foundation of traditional journalism, experiences are designed which
offer viewers a fully embodied walk-around technology. This offers a
virtual but “first-hand” sensation of being an actual witness as a story
unfolds.

Many media houses internationally have
already ventured into virtual journalism and have produced numerous VR
documentaries. With the rapid technological advancements in India, VR
stands at the cusp of altering storytelling forever. Indian
documentaries such as Cost of Coal (India’s first documentary in VR) and
Displaced, planned for release in 2016, are indicative of the potential
in the technology.

What’s next?

VR
can fundamentally change the way individuals, groups and organizations
interact, and for those interested in experiencing and sharing its
powerful benefits, it offers an exceptional opportunity, perhaps unlike
any other medium. To realise the full potential of VR, pioneering VR
headsets and VR-capable hardware and software are required. This is only
possible through the partnerships and vision of companies and
organizations that bring the most cutting-edge technology to this
virtual table. And that’s the reality.

Microsoft releases MS MARCO dataset to train AI systems

Microsoft Corp. has made yet another big bet in its quest to
help lead the development of artificial intelligence with the release of
a new dataset containing 100,000 questions and answers.
Called MS MARCO,
or Microsoft Machine Reading Comprehension, the dataset is being made
available for researchers wishing to train their AI systems. The company
says the anonymized data is based on real-world queries typed into its
Bing search engine, and that the aim is to make AIs better able to
understand questions in a conversational context than they are now.
Microsoft explains that while virtual assistants like Cortana and
Siri are already quite adept at reciting facts and figures like the
population of certain cities or previous World Series winners, they’re
not quite so comfortable with more complex or ambiguous questions. For
example, if someone asks Siri what’s the current state of the war in
Syria, most virtual assistants will simply provide search engine results
that the user then has to comb through to find the answer.
That simply isn’t good enough for Microsoft, which believes its
dataset can be used by virtual assistants to provide more definitive
answers to such questions. The idea is that instead of simply providing a
page of search query results, AIs might be able to analyze those
results themselves and come up with an actual answer to the question.
“In order to move toward artificial general intelligence, we need to
take a step toward being able to read a document and understand it as
well as a person,” said
Rangan Majumder (above), a partner group program manager with
Microsoft’s Bing search engine division who is leading the effort. “This
is a step in that direction.”
Microsoft said the MS MARCO dataset contains questions that its
researchers found “interesting.” The answers were based on existing web
pages and verified to be accurate by real humans, so as to try and teach
AIs to do the same thing themselves. Microsoft said the dataset is
available for researchers for free.
The release of MS MARCO came at the end of a busy week on the AI
front for Microsoft. Last Monday, the company made headlines with the announcement of a new fund for AI startups, which has already taken a startup called Element AI
under its wing. Element AI, is based in Montreal, is working to build
commercial-grade AI systems and support the work of local startups
trying to apply neural networks in new fields.
Also last week, Microsoft announced a preview of the Cortana Skills
Kit and Devices SDK, which are designed for manufacturers that want to
integrate Cortana into various smart hardware devices, from cars to home
appliances.
With the Cortana Devices SDK, Microsoft is hoping
to take on Amazon.com, Inc.’s Alexa-powered Dot and Echo devices, and
also Google Inc’s smart home speaker Google Home. To do so, Microsoft is
collaborating with Harman Kardon, a brand under Harman International
Industries Inc., to create an Amazon Echo-like device that’s integrated
with Cortana’s AI capabilities.

Carnegie Mellon and Hear2Read Make Free Software Available

A
visually impaired boy in India uses open-source software developed by
CMU and the Hear2Read project that converts electronic text written in
Indian languages into messages he can hear.

BY Byron Spice - Thu, 2016-08-04 09:30

Millions of visually impaired people in India may benefit from
free, open-source software for Android devices that converts electronic
text written in Indian languages into messages they can hear.

The text-to-speech (TTS) software, developed by Carnegie Mellon University in collaboration with the Hear2Read project, can now be downloaded free of charge from Google Play.
Tamil is the first language offered, with subsequent releases of seven
major languages — Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Punjabi
and Telugu — expected over the remainder of the year.

Four out of
five people in India speak one of those eight languages. India has 22
official languages in all. More than 62 million Indians are visually
impaired.

"We're looking to create speech output for as many
languages as possible," said Suresh Bazaj, a serial entrepreneur in the
San Francisco Bay area and founder of Hear2Read.

TTS software is
commonplace in the United States and many parts of the world, but Bazaj
said good quality TTS for Indian languages is difficult to find,
difficult to use or unaffordable. Yet the need is great — only 10
percent of blind children in India get any education, and 90 percent of
visually impaired Indians live in poverty.

"Making it available as free, open-source software thus was a key goal," said Alan Black, a professor in the School of Computer Science's Language Technologies Institute
(LTI). "People should be able to download this and it should just work.
We put a lot of effort into making this accessible and easy to use."

Bazaj
met Black, a scientist internationally known for his work in speech
synthesis, through Alok Parlikar, a former student of Black's, two years
ago and recruited him to the project. While the LTI had a wealth of
knowledge and tools for creating TTS software, the Hear2Read project
inspired Black and his students to develop a system for doing so
repeatedly, efficiently and for producing user-friendly software.

"Each
language is different, and historically TTS systems have been done one
at a time," Bazaj said. "We looked at commonalities of Indian languages
and developed tools to apply the same technology to multiple languages."

The
system developed by Black's research team enables creation of a
baseline TTS system after recording 2–3 hours of clear, consistent
speech from a native speaker. The open-source text read by the speaker
comes from various sources such as Wikisource, books and periodicals. (Check out the video below.)

Though
the machine learning process used to create voice databases requires
large-scale computing, the resulting database for each language is
relatively small and can run on low-end Android phones or tablets that
retail for less than $100 (7,000 Indian rupees). That cost threshold is
within guidelines established by the Government of India's Assistance
for Disabled Persons program, which helps people with disabilities
purchase assistive devices based on income.

The conversion from
text to speech is done in real-time without internet access, as most
people in India either do not have continuous internet access or cannot
afford it.

The Hear2Read app works with the Android Talkback
accessibility option that allows people with low vision to use
applications such as web browsers, email, SMS (texting), phone calls,
word processors, spreadsheets and book readers.

For Bazaj, this
project has personal meaning. He has had retinal detachments in both
eyes that were successfully repaired. He was fortunate to have access to
excellent medical care, which is not the case for most people in India.
He believes the ability to read is directly related to a good quality
of life, and so his mission began.

"Like any startup, I jumped
into it not knowing how deep the pool was," Bazaj recalled. After
meeting Black, he began supporting a CMU student to develop TTS for
Indian languages. In addition, he has recruited more than 50 native
Indian speaking volunteers based in the United States and India.

"This
project couldn't have been accomplished without the dedication and
support provided by our selfless volunteers," Bazaj said. The San
Francisco Bay Area non-profits Access Braille and Indians for Collective Action have provided funding to support the project.

###

Carnegie Mellon University
is a private, internationally ranked research university with programs
in areas ranging from science, technology and business, to public
policy, the humanities and the arts. More than 13,000 students in the
university's seven schools and colleges benefit from a small
student-to-faculty ratio and an education characterized by its focus on
creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary
collaboration and innovation.

Hear2Read is
a volunteer organization dedicated to bridging the digital divide for
blind and low-vision Indic language populations. Our mission is to open
doors to all education, employment and business opportunities for the
visually challenged.

According to data tabled in the Lok Sabha by
the Human Resources Development Minister on December 5, 2016, 18 per cent
positions of teachers in government-run primary schools and 15 per cent in
secondary schools are vacant nationwide. Educationist Dev Lahiri talks about
whats plaguing the system.

What’s
the biggest problem our education system is facing?

Our teachers. It’s the last choice for most,
for various reasons. They just want to get the job done with and make money
from tuitions. Most teachers have very little connect with students and don’t
know, for instance, how to keep them engaged on days they are ‘switched off’
and don’t want to know Maths or Science. Good teachers link curriculum to life
in a very imaginative way.

How do
we get the right kind of people on board?

We need to put out the message strongly that
teachers are the backbone of society. Thanks to the Nehruvian ethos, right
after independence the emphasis was on engineering and medicine, then as
corporate world took over, MBA became big, then IT and finance. But school
teaching was never given priority, and so even today we don’t have a single
teacher-training institution with the brand equity of an IIT or IIM. We need to
make teaching a prestigious, well-paying, aspirational profession and have an
elite examination like IAS for it. Teachers must be held accountable with
stringent assessment and accordingly promoted. Pride (with substance) needs to
be built into the profession. In Finland to become a good teacher is like
getting into an IIT!

You’ve
worked with several schools. Do you see a flaw in the mindset?

Schools are obsessed with certifications and
not education. The system itself is flawed. Students have to choose between
Commerce, Science and Arts as early as Class 9. At that level you should be
able to do physics and Shakespeare, music and Maths, Humanities, Sociology and Political
Science, and understand the connection between all diciplines. The US offers
this even at university level. Our system is repressive. CBSE has a range of
wonderful subjects, but it’s so difficult to find teachers, especially for the
Humanities, because it has no tuition market. The Humanities are largely
scoffed at and we (the nation) are paying a heavy price for it.

Wouldn’t
it be better at boarding schools?

Boarding schools have a great opportunity for
non-curricular activities, value building and citizenship and it does wonders
to kids. But they too are facing competition from the tuition market. Post
Class 10, parents want to remove their kids and get them seriously involved in
professional exams. Therefore, some boarding schools have started outsourcing
that part to tuition academies. Ironically, that’s pushing corporates to take
employees for group and outdoor activities to develop their leadership skills
and out of the box thinking.

No
board seems to be doing well, including the once-prestigious ICSE. What’s the
reason?

CBSE is constantly working towards upgrading
and the NCERT’s doing good research for text books. But there’s no support and
there’s a lot of heterogeneous activity thanks to our numbers. Moreover, it
often becomes a political tool in the hand of governments; it should be
neutral. As for ICSE, it’s become the preserve of a very small community that
in the past gave us amazing teachers, but has no new thinking going on today
thanks to brain drain. State boards are the greatest concern, 80% in some
states is equivalent to 40% in others.

Is
there any attempt to standardise scores with mechanisms like GPA?

No, but there should be. The focus is
entirely on higher education; no one talks about schools even though they
preparing you for it.

And
what about contemporary issues pertaining to students?

Bullying is a big problem, but heads try to
push all issues under the carpet, increasing the danger. We need honest
dialogue between all stakeholders on substance abuse, atheism and gender issues,
but our schools have no place for it. Hence, even today, in co-ed schools, when
girls make requests regarding their periods, a titter goes around the class and
ill-equipped, embarrassed male teachers end up tackling it ham-handedly.

You’ve
been advocating student-led solutions. Can they help?

I have great faith in young people, but how
will their creative juices flow, when they are so busy trying to get that 99%?
With students at the university I work in, I’ve created a peer counselling
programme to rescue kids who are getting drunk and putting themselves in
danger; they can call the university for help or to be picked up when in
vulnerable situations.